This morning I took my husband, Fred, to the Bone Clinic where he had his 10th compression fracture filled with bone cement. On the last day of 2014 he had his last two fractures filled which, at the time, added up to nine. Within the first week of the new year he had three more new fractures!Today the doctor talked to us about a medicine that is taken with a daily injection. It is expensive and has some side effects and Fred was hesitant about it. But our doctor told us that Fred is two or three times more likely to have a broken hip, or wrist, or some other place besides the back, and he believes this is the best possible medicine for him to take. The mention of a nursing home for care, if a hip were broken, is reason enough to seriously consider this medicine.

Last weekend I led a retreat for our Christian Education Team from our church. It was a much needed time away for every woman there. Each one had experienced a great loss over the past six months and they were all just hanging on, trying to do their best with the task of teaching.

We talked about our congregation and how it is very much a caring, loving family to all. It’s a place, not only for worship and learning, for fellowship and fun, but it is a great place to go when you are emotionally and physically drained. One woman described it as “a safe place to fall.”

I thought of that description this morning as the doctor was talking about Fred possibly falling and breaking a hip. I pray, literally, for a safe place for him to fall.The problem is we never really know when we are going to fall. If we did, we would always make sure it was in a “soft place.”

Our congregation has been a soft place for Fred and for me to fall as we face these broken back issues. The encouragement and the prayers, the love and care mean so much to us, and we’ve witnessed that same soft place being there for others so many times. There are many different ways that we fall, don’t you think? We fall off of our diet; we “fall off the wagon” when trying to stop drinking; we fall away from our new year’s resolutions; we fall away from a commitment in a relationship. Sometimes, we fall far away from our Creator. We veer off the path where He leads us and often times end up falling into that dark, slippery pit where we end up sitting in the muck, crying out for help.

But, even there, when we are at our lowest possible place, God gives us something soft to land on. Slimy muck is fairly soft, even if it isn’t pleasant. And it is there in that pit, where there is no place to run, that we face the things that have caused us to fall. Perhaps it is a burden so heavy to carry that it breaks our back, causes us to stoop and then to fall. Perhaps it is our own careless choices we make that caused us to slip into this hole. But, just as Fred and I have found great hope in our new doctor and the procedures he uses to “straighten Fred up,” so God, the great Healer, can use those dead-end pits we fall into to speak to us, to give us hope, to straighten us up.

In God’s own Son, Jesus, we have seen mercy, compassion, pure redemption and grace that straightens us up and sets us back on the right path – the path He has set for us. God has provided a soft place to fall.

Chris Cook

2/5/2015 12:17:49 pm

Amen!

Marcia Downing

2/5/2015 12:27:32 pm

I really like this idea of "a soft place to fall".

Tiffany Carter

2/5/2015 02:41:15 pm

I needed to read this today. :) Thank you for sharing your beautiful words. Praying for Fred.

Thanks, friends, for your comments. I'm slowly getting some writing done and I love blogging. I still have things to learn but thanks to Craig Powell at 5BlockRadius I'm getting there. Reading your comments is affirming! Blessings!

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Author

I am a woman with many interests, yet most of them flow into what is my source of life, my very breath, the reason I do what I do. I am Called. That means, for me, I have experienced a call on my life to serve as a pastor to God’s people. In that calling I love to write, to speak, to lead, and to teach. My deepest desire is to pass on to others what I have experienced in my own journey of grace. I am human, and in that humanity I have known passion and joy, sin and disgrace. Yet, in God’s love I have known nothing but love and redirection and total grace.

I love to read and watch movies; to write both serious things and silly poems; I am a potter, a pianist (although amateur at both); I like satire and lots of humor; I enjoy drawing and painting and dreaming. And writing. I love writing.